Participatory environmental management: Contradiction of process,project and bureaucracy in the Himalayan foothills

Using comparative Asian experience of organizational change, this article analyses the experience of an Indian organization responsible for environmental management in the Himalayan foothills of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in moving from a standard Indian public sector approach to rural development and environmental management, to a new participatory approach. Successive World Bank funded watershed management projects in the Himalayan foothills were widely held not to have achieved and sustained their full potential in the past, largely due to an absence of effective local management of assets after the projects' end. On the other hand communities and groups have shown on a small scale a capacity to manage resources in a sustainable way. The Government of Uttar Pradesh's (UP) European Union (EU) funded Doon Valley Project has been through a first phase in which a participatory method of village level planning has been initiated. The article addresses the required changes and constraints involved in this first step of transformation. These include issues to do with organizational structure and procedures, training, gender and other social issues, and the dynamics of organizational change. The implications of a participatory approach are far reaching. The ‘off the shelf’ schemes that Government has offered to individuals, groups and communities in all watershed management as well as other rural development programmes are challenged both by the specificities of the Himalayan environment, and by the adoption of a genuinely participatory approach. Allowing people to decide how they will manage their hillsides requires an ability to facilitate that process. Facilitators need to have the flexibility and creativity to offer a variety of technical and managerial possibilities such that individuals, groups and communities can choose what suits them best. Constraints derive partly from the Government's set procedures and schemes in rural development, and from its advocacy of particular well worn technology packages. Constraints also derive from the way in which the whole project has been handled by Government and the Commission of the European Union from the beginning, and from the way in which technical assistance has been organized. It is important that governments and donors learn from such experiences so that future participatory environmental management work can have a greater chance of success.     

Scaling‐up participation at USAID

Since the 1970s many non‐governmental development organisations have moved away from top‐down modes of operation toward participatory practices that hand over decision‐making power to the poor. The bilateral development agencies of the industrialised states have been slower to follow suit, but in the 1980s and 1990s a number of such agencies also initiated participatory‐oriented reforms. Development scholars have paid little attention to reforms of the larger organisations. In this article, we analyse the efforts of the United States Agency for International Development to embrace participation in the 1990s. Internal reformers managed to change some agency procedures but had only limited success in institutionalising participatory practices. Forces internal to the agency, including rigid rules and employee incentive structures, hampered reform efforts. Also, while some developments external to the agency facilitated participation, many others, including legislative interference and shifting national policy priorities, hindered change toward participation. The case reveals how complex webs of accountability relationships make participatory‐oriented transformation a cumbersome process in large development organisations. Change towards participation can succeed, but only if reformers acknowledge and consider existing institutional constraints. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Foreign aid and the politics of participation in economic policy reform

Research suggests that borrower ‘ownership’ of reforms is highly correlated with the success of reforms in developing countries. One of the most important components of ownership is the nature of public–private relations and consultation with interest groups. Yet participatory reform must overcome several political dilemmas, including problems of credibility, collective action, and distributive (in)justice. The characteristics of reforms also affect the possibilities for participation. Democratic governments interested in making policy reform more participatory and presumably more sustainable can draw on several strategies, including the selective use of incentives and compensation, public education and communications, capacity building in society, institutional mechanisms for consultation, and political sequencing of reforms. These strategies have implications for the foreign aid agencies who often fund reforms. They suggest that donors need to recognize the political rationality behind cross‐payments and spending to maintain important constituencies; that political sustainability may require reform sequences that are out of step with current orthodoxy; that policies ought to create winners before creating losers; that democratic consultation will require much more time in achieving consensus; and that outside actors need to refrain from intervening too directly in the political process by throwing their support behind particular interests. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From consultation to participatory governance? A critical review of citizen engagement strategies in Queensland

This article explores what appears to be a major shift in the policies and practices of national and international governments–the increased attention to, and use of, citizen engagement strategies as a basis for developing more participatory forms of governance. The article examines recent citizen engagement initiatives of the Queensland state government which have grappled with these complex political, policy and service concerns. The potential innovation and effectiveness of citizen engagement techniques and approaches are examined. The limitations of technical methodologies based on a traditional consultative framework are highlighted. The article analyses the relationship between these citizen engagement practices and more strategic democratic reforms based on notions of participatory governance.     

Another Opportunity Lost? Victorian Labor's Enactment of Sustainability, 1999–2010

‘Sustainability’ provides the dominant frame for environmental policy debate, even though there is considerable debate to as to what sustainability is, why is it needed, and how can it be progressed. From 1999 through to 2010, Victoria was governed by Australian Labor Party (ALP) led governments that, at times, actively pursued the goal of sustainable development. This culminated in the stated ambition for Victoria to be ‘world leaders in environmental sustainability debate and practice’. This paper explores the way in which sustainability was enacted by Victorian Labor while in government. The evidence indicates that the potential of Victorian Labor's vision was never realized, and that it failed to significantly reform the neoliberal policy settings it inherited.     

Predictors of success in a participatory village development project in Thailand

Participatory development strategies are known to mobilize rural resources, but their effectiveness depends on local conditions. This article evaluates the potential importance of three facilitating factors: competing opportunities, development experience, and local leadership. The impact of these factors on project outcome is examined through study of a rural development project undertaken from 1982 to 1985 in southern Thailand. The project used participatory techniques to build self-guided problem-solving groups in 21 poor villages. The village groups launched income-generating, health, education and related efforts that attracted the participation of large numbers of village residents. Comparison of the village project experiences confirms that: participatory strategies are more effective in villages that (1) are relatively isolated from competing urban opportunities (villagers are more prepared to invest their own resources in the community); (2) have prior experience with development efforts and community endeavours (villagers are more open to learning new approaches); (3) hold greater confidence in traditional village leaders and local government agents. When local leadership is not held in great confidence, participatory strategies are found to encourage the emergence of new leadership that can successfully guide project efforts.     

AN EVALUATION OF FURTHER REFORMS IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION PROCESS

By 1992, the party of the majority, the Democratic Party, will have been out of power for twenty years of a twenty-four year span. Since 1968, numerous reforms in the presidential nominating process have been considered and adopted by the Democrats. These reforms have had the effect of opening the nominating process to rank-and-file Democrats through state primaries and participatory caucuses. While the reforms achieve this purpose, the end result is a mixed system that has been described as a disjointed hodgepodge of rules.
This article presents ten criteria of a sound nomination system. Then a panel of researchers and practitioners weighs seven options for further reform against the ten criteria. Several policy options are considered by the panel as improvements over the current presidential nomination system.     

Sustainable intensification and ecosystem services: new directions in agricultural governance

Reconciling environmental objectives for land use with the need to produce more food is a prominent concern of scientific and policy discourses on sustainable agriculture. The idea of sustainable intensification has emerged as one prominent framing of this challenge. In this paper we elaborate this idea from an ecosystem services perspective to natural resource management, with particular reference to developments in the UK. The paper considers the general origins and attributes of the perspective and how the challenge of sustainable intensification would be conceptualized and approached through it. While efforts to link analysis of ecosystem services to policy development and delivery in the UK are revealed as consistent with prevailing, and often long standing, approaches to sustainable agriculture, the marketization of environmental assets is highlighted as a distinguishing feature of current policy applications. The character and limitations of this facet of the ecosystem services agenda are discussed. The need to animate ecological issues of sustainable intensification through frames of reference other than those of economic valuation is emphasized.     

Legislating deliberative engagement: Is local government in Victoria willing and able?

Growing dissatisfaction with representative democracy and concomitantly, the increasing expectation that citizens assert more influence over public policy have seen the emergence of more participatory and deliberative forms of governance in public management practice. This article explores the attempt of the state government of Victoria, Australia to legislate for mandatory deliberative engagement as part of its local government strategic planning instruments. The ambition of the reform was significant; however, it was almost unanimously rejected by the local government sector. Based on analysis of the key themes that emerged from the submissions made during the 3-year Victorian Local Government Act Review process, we explore the limitations and barriers to implementing deliberative engagement practice at a local government level. We demonstrate that whilst the promise of participatory democracy might have been compelling, in the case of Victoria there were a series of contextual and capacity considerations that needed to be taken into account before the implementation of such reforms were pursued.     

Management and change in northern Nigerian local government

This paper looks at some recent changes introduced by the Federal Government of Nigeria which seek a return to civilian rule in a stable polity. A first step in this policy has been completed with the election of chairmen and councillors at the local government level. The stated purpose of this initiative is to encourage ‘grass roots democracy’, which is expected to mobilize local action for urban and rural development. It is envisaged that local politicians and local administration will work together to this end. The paper concentrates on the consequences of the policy for the management of local government in Northern Nigeria, in which the predominant need is for rural development. The resource and management issues that arise for local government from the introduction of this polity are discussed under the following headings: finance, material resources, human resources and political relationships. The measures adopted appear radical, but have not led to a situation in which local government can easily predict what resources will be available to it. The question that is addressed is how, in an uncertain environment, local governments might use the powers and resources that are within their control to facilitate rural development in the Northern States. Suggestions are made as to what a management agenda should be and how this might be achieved through appropriate management systems and improved training.     

The post‐Stalinist present and the Australian past

Abstract

Since 1979, housing reforms in China have been seen as successive state efforts to improve urban governance. The idea is that the state has all along failed to deliver housing efficiently and equitably through the work units and that it is believed that only through the recommodification of housing could the housing problem be ultimately resolved. The housing monetarization policy (HMP) was thus launched in 1998 to replace the long-standing in-kind housing subsidy under the old welfare housing system. The policy aims at providing workers with cash subsidies as part of their wage package to enable them to buy or rent their homes from the market. The purpose of this paper is to explain the implications of the HMP through a neoliberal urbanization perspective. Through the case study of Guiyang, it is argued that while the HMP is successful in improving certain historical housing inequalities, it does not primarily aim at eradicating housing inequalities. HMP has in fact led to more rather than less horizontal inequities. In addition, it is argued here that a market housing system is leading towards increasing urban poverty, greater social polarization and spatial segregation. To improve governance, China needs to keep neoliberal urbanization in check and pay serious attention to its adverse consequences during economic transformation.     

Assessing labour freedom in agriculture: Developing world perspective focusing on India

This piece of work evaluates the choices and opportunities opened up in rural labour market through institutional reforms and developmental policies fostering agricultural growth and efficiency in developing countries, with a focus on India. It finds that policy reforms on property rights, involving legal approvals of land ownership or partial possession with rental contracts, strengthen bargaining capacity among marginalized groups. Furthermore, an inclusive development policy encompassing the rural sector shapes labour freedom by stabilization of market at desirable wage and employment rates. Considering a case example from an advanced agricultural region in India, this study reveals a positive and significant relationship between intensity of labour freedom and land-based status of peasant households. The analysis of primary data suggests that labour market reforms, particularly those focused on wage contracts and minimum wage laws, off-farm jobs and intra-migration employment opportunities before labourers, are crucial indicators for enhancing labour freedom in rural areas.     

Policy Legacies,Visa Reform and the Resilience of Immigration Politics

Comparative scholarship tacitly assumes immigration politics to be relatively rigid. A state's immigration policy legacy is said to institutionalise policy preferences, thereby making it difficult to implement lasting reforms that are inconsistent with that legacy. This presents difficulties for states with restrictionist legacies wanting to implement liberal reforms in response to the emergence of labour shortages or demographic problems. The supposed rigidity of immigration politics is scrutinised in this article through a systematic process analysis of developments in the United Kingdom over the past decade, where the Blair government confounded the UK's characterisation as a ‘reluctant immigration state’ to implement various liberal work visa reforms. The uncoordinated nature of policymaking and implementation, and the limited involvement of state and societal institutions in the reform process, reflect the UK's historical experience with restrictionist policies, and help to explain the subsequent reintroduction of strict visa controls. The case demonstrates that policy legacies indeed play a significant role in defining the character of the policymaking institutions that shape a state's immigration politics.     

农村基层治理:科层制抑或反科层化?——基于桂南Q市“联镇包村”制度运作的调研分析

农村基层治理是国家治理体系的重要组成部分,也是各级政府提升社会治理能力的重要抓手。以“包发展、包党建、包稳定”为主导的联镇包村制度是地方政府回应国家加强农村基层治理的一项制度安排,在制度运行中显现出如下特点:组织高层依赖权威治理,化解政策执行阻力;委派单位依赖代理治理,缓和基层社会矛盾;驻村干部依赖指标治理,提高主体责任意识的科层制路径依赖特性。在压力型体制下,不同行动者的行动逻辑显现出差异化:组织高层由“权威动员”向“参与互动”转变;委派单位由“分利失序”向“合作共治”转变;驻村干部由“被动回应”向“主动服务”转变。这种反科层化的运作方式推动联镇包村制度运行,以此提升基层自治组织的治理能力,进而推动农村基层走向“善治”。     

Can participation be induced? Some evidence from developing countries 1

Influenced by Amartya Sen, over the last decade, The World Bank has allocated nearly US$80 billion to local participatory development projects targeting poverty, improved public service delivery, and strengthened social cohesion and government accountability. But the success of these programs is hindered by both endogenous local factors and flawed program design and implementation. Two especially important local obstacles are (1) entrenched interests of political agents, civil bureaucrats, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with either incentives to resist or capabilities to appropriate program resources, and (2) poverty and illiteracy, as the poor and illiterate participate less and benefit less from participatory projects than do the wealthier, more educated, and more connected. After reviewing hundreds of participatory projects, three lessons are clear for program planning. First, contextual factors like inequality, history, geography, and political systems (among others) are important. Second, communities do not necessarily have a ready stock of ‘social capital’ to mobilize. Third, induced participatory interventions work best when supported by a responsive state – donors cannot substitute for a non-functional state, and successful programs combine enlightened state action from above with social mobilization from below. Future participatory development projects would benefit substantially from revised planning and considerably more attention paid to evaluation and monitoring. Project managers have historically paid little attention to context, monitoring, or evaluation, in part because The World Bank’s operational policies did not provide incentives to do so. Donor agencies should also exercise greater patience and allow for flexible, long-term engagement to facilitate contextual and programmatic learning, including learning from failure.     

The “baby steps” in mainstreaming sustainable public procurement in Ghana: A “double‐agency” perspective

The emerging literature on public procurement policy suggests that public procurement may be leveraged to advance several public policy agenda. Hence, many countries have reformed their public procurement process towards social and environmental outcomes termed sustainable public procurement. These reforms have often been launched in response to international initiatives such as the global 10‐year framework for action on sustainable consumption and production by the Johannesburg implementation plan in 2002 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet, empirical evidence on the drivers and benefits of SPP in developing countries is still scarce. This gap is addressed with a qualitative case study of six public sector institutions in Ghana. On the basis of elite interviews, this paper highlights barriers to mainstreaming SPP in Ghana's public sector. We further advance the scanty principal–agency literature by establishing a double‐agency relationship in the context of SPP, which depicts limited agency cases where principals lack the capacity to defend their own interests.     

Social reproduction and the limits of a neoliberal approach: the case of Singapore

Should citizenship status confer social rights independent of an individual's economic contribution? This study approaches this question through looking at social settings in which answers are contested. Specifically, it documents and analyzes qualitative semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews with 221 Singaporean citizens. As such, it complements existing critical policy studies on shifting conceptualizations of social citizenship and the rise of neoliberal governance. Data analysis illustrates interviewees' perceptions and lived experience of neoliberal, or ‘market citizenship’, bias in state population policy. Interviewees, moreover, find existing pronatalist incentives helpful but insufficient, largely because they see a decision to have more children as a long-term commitment requiring continual investment. They call for more generous, sustained, and universal state provisions for education and health, as well as homemaker allowances, which would be closer to feminist and classical formulations of citizenship-as-social rights.     

Candidate gender quotas: A framework for analysis

Abstract.  Quotas for women in politics have diffused rapidly around the globe in recent years, with political parties and national legislatures in more than a hundred countries adopting – or debating the adoption of – reserved seats, party quotas or legislative quotas to increase the selection of female candidates to political office. These developments have sparked an explosion of research on candidate gender quotas. However most of this work focuses on single cases and reflects little awareness of developments in other countries around the world. As a result, the findings in one case are often contradicted in other studies, revealing few clear patterns with regard to the origins and outcomes of gender quota policies. To foster a more cumulative research agenda, this article approaches quotas as a global phenomenon and elaborates a framework for analyzing and comparing the actors, motivations and contexts at work in specific quota reforms.     

RESPONSES TO GROWTH IN THE SUN-BELT STATE: PLANNING AND COORDINATING POLICY INITIATIVES IN QUEENSLAND

Abstract: Queensland's population growth phenomenon has demanded responses from the state government for greater intervention in planning land use and resources utilisation. Planning, especially regional planning, represents an area of traditional policy neglect in Queensland, explained in part by the division of powers such that local authorities, rather than the state, have the major responsibility for land-use development and physical services. Local government jurisdiction in planning poses a challenge for the state government in how best to strategically manage regional growth, while at the same time respecting local authority autonomy in planning decision-making.
Over the last three years, the Goss government has undertaken both administrative reforms and a comprehensive and innovative planning exercise to shape urban development in south-east Queensland, the area of greatest population density and growth. In particular, it has adopted a model of corporate government as a framework for the planning process. The corporate model promotes a "whole of government" approach to strategic planning, emphasising efficient and effective outcomes for clients. The model's client orientation has elevated and formalised the role of community input in decision-making, and provided a process for negotiation between the players in planning policy development. In an intergovernmental environment, consultation with local authorities is important but the managerialist aspects of corporate government are likely to encourage central control of the planning policy agenda. Both are necessary for improved urban outcomes, yet it remains to be seen how these potentially conflicting processes can be reconciled in practice.